1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally directed to the selection of optical fibers and, more specifically, to the selection of optical fiber reels from inventory to fill an order, or to the selection of optical fiber reels from inventory to fabricate a cable or set of cables with specified optical parameters.
2. Technical Background
When an optical fiber is produced, the optical fiber is generally placed on a reel for storage within a warehouse, prior to shipment to a customer. Before the optical fiber reel is stored in the warehouse, however, various optical parameters of the optical fiber reel are normally recorded. When a customer order is received for optical fibers, optical fiber reels are generally selected so that when the optical fiber reels are assembled into final cables (e.g., submarine cables) customer requirements on the optical specifications may be met at a constituent (i.e., optical fiber reel), set (a number of optical fiber reels that will be spliced end-to-end to form a continuous fiber transmission line), block (a cable including all of the multiple sets that make up a cable) and batch (multiple cables) levels. For example, a customer may place an order for 3 cable lengths of 400 km (batch), each of the 3 cables having 100 fiber lengths (block), and each fiber length consisting of a number of fibers spliced together (sets) to form a correct length fiber which will then be assembled with 99 other fiber sets to form each cable. However, because of the number of different customer requirements and their stringency, many optical fiber reels fail to individually meet all of the customer requirements. By judiciously selecting optical fiber reels for use in a set, block, and/or batch, optical specifications can be tightened, thus, increasing a guardband and reducing variability at the set, block and/or batch level. The selection of the fibers may be done to meet specified optical parameters to enable fabrication of a set/block/batch with specific parameters for a standardized application, rather than for a specific customized customer order.
The selection of optical fiber reels from inventory for use in a submarine application, to fill a customer order, has typically been accomplished by two methods. A first method has been to manually select optical fiber reels from a spreadsheet (which contains various optical parameters on each optical fiber reel), such that the selected optical fiber reels, when combined, meet the customer requirements. However, manually selecting optical fiber reels from a spreadsheet is labor intensive, time consuming, seldom optimizes the optical parameters of the combined optical fiber reels and generally fails to optimize the use of inventory.
Thus, what is needed is a system and method for selecting optical fiber reels from inventory that provides the desired performance characteristics and which eliminates manual selection of reels while efficiently using inventory.